At the Medical Arts Building

The Medical Arts Building

23 August 2023

Old photo of Medical Arts Building, corner of Sherbrooke Street West
and where Guy becomes Cote des Neiges Road; photo from the 1920s.

Located on the corner of Guy Street and Sherbrooke Street West, the Medical Arts Building is still a location for doctors and other professionals. Many years ago I went to a meeting of the Theosophical Society of Montreal in this building; it was a small office with many shelved books wrapped in brown paper dust jackets. I was there to hear a lecture on the teachings of J. Krishnamurti; you might know that when Krishnamurti was a child he was discovered by Leadbetter, a friend of Annie Besant and a prominent member of the Theosophical Society in the early 1900s. The discovery was prescient and Krishnamurti went on the become one of the most important spiritual teachers of the 20th Century. 

    Recently, I was on the tenth floor of the Medical Arts building and looking out of the window, looking west along Sherbrooke Street, I noticed buildings that are important to my family. There was the Grand Seminaire (the College de Montreal), formerly run by the Sulpician Order that still owns this and other properties, for instance, Cote des Neiges Cemetery, on the Island of Montreal. My two great great uncles, Fr. Martin Callaghan and Fr. James Callaghan were educated at le College de Montreal and they both went on to prominent roles in the city; for instance, Fr. Martin was the first Montreal-born pastor at St. Patrick's Church; Fr. James was pastor at St. Ann’s Church in Griffintown. Fr. Martin and Fr. James are buried at the crypt below the church at the Grand Seminaire de Montreal. A third brother, Fr. Luke Callaghan, was the man who saved  St. Mary's Hospital when its survival was in doubt. Fr. James and Fr. Martin are buried in the crypt under the large chapel at the Grand Seminaire de Montreal; Fr. Luke is buried at Cote des Neiges Cemetery.

Above photos 23 August 2023

    Across the street from the Grand Seminaire is the Masonic Temple, where my grandfather and uncle were both Masons.  It is a magnificent building and I haven't caught that magnificence and size in these photos.

Above photos 23 August 2023

    Near here, almost next door to the Masonic Temple, is the Heffel Art Gallery with its Joe Fafard statue of "Emily Carr and her friends" outside. Very nice! We are all Emily Carr fans.

 

    Then, a few blocks west, still on Sherbrooke Street West, I could see the Mother House where my mother attended secretarial school. She completed her diploma at the High School of Montreal, it is still located on University Street but is now dedicated to art education, and then attended the Mother House. This was a popular secretarial school in the past and the girls got good jobs upon completion of their studies. My mother worked for a jeweler located in the Hermes Building; the family that owned the business invited her to their summer cottage, which my mother's protective father did not allow, and they asked her to stay working for them when she announced she was leaving to get married in 1940; she always spoke with fondness about this family and her years of working for them.

    And finally, across the street from the Mother House is where my son lived while he attended Dawson College (which now occupies the buildings of the Mother House). During the 1997 Ice Storm, my mother stayed with my son at his apartment in this building; I was in Vancouver during this time. When I returned home at the end of the Ice Storm the grounds of Dawson College were strewn with broken branches and broken trees. 

 

  

    This is what I mean by living in a community and the community giving back to you a sense of belonging, of history and remembering the ancestors and listening as they speak to you, of having a place in society that began with your ancestors and history and respecting the ancestors by remembering them and honouring what they did for society and for you in particular. I say "God bless them all!"

 

Night view of the twin towers, College de Montreal; around 2011

Just to conclude, this stretch of Sherbrooke Street West, from Atwater to Guy Street, is one of the places where I've always parked when downtown; usually I can find a parking space here; but it is also a street that I like to walk along, a street of apartment buildings and offices and historical buildings and people out walking to work or walking their dogs. Here is something of what it looks like.

Note: everything is years ago now, but years ago I visited an acupuncturist with a friend and when the Asian doctor heard that we were poets he said that one of his patients was Artie Gold; that must have been mid to late 1990s. Located in the Grosvenor Building, 1610 Sherbrooke West, north-west corner of the street.

Emily Carr on art and religion

"Emily Carr et ses amis" by Joe Fafard on Sherbrooke St. West
near St. Mathieu, 20 April 2013  

July 16th, 1933

Once I heard it stated and now I believe it to be true that there is no true art without religion. The artist himself may not think he is religious but if he is sincere his sincerity in itself is religion. If something other than the material did not speak to him, and if he did not have faith in that something and also in himself, he would not try to express it. Every artist I meet these days seems to me to leak out something, some in one way, some in another, tip-toeing, stretching up, longing for something beyond what he sees or can reach.

Emily Carr, Hundreds and Thousands, the Journals of Emily Carr, Clarke, Irwin & Company Limited, Toronto/Vancouver, 1966. P. 41.